


protect and serve

by BooyahFordhamYacht



Series: i'll love you til the day i die(rollisi oneshots) [3]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Fix-it, Episode Related, Episode: s17e16 Star-Struck Victims, Episode: s17e19 Sheltered Outcasts, F/M, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooyahFordhamYacht/pseuds/BooyahFordhamYacht
Summary: a story in two chapters. one, in which sonny finds himself wanting to protect amanda, and two, in which amanda finds herself wanting to protect sonny.or, starstruck victims and sheltered outcasts told as rollisi falling in love(is that not what they were?).
Relationships: Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr./Amanda Rollins
Series: i'll love you til the day i die(rollisi oneshots) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/998022
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	1. 1715

It’s Liv who tells him, because of course it is. Liv, who shows up at his desk with that “I’m sorry for what I’m about to tell you” face on, and his heart drops out of his chest. She’s one of the only people who really knows what Amanda means to Sonny, and for her to have that face means that something is wrong. More than that, something is wrong with  _ Amanda _ .

“What?” he asks, standing from his desk.

“She’s fine, she’s on her way in, but Rollins went rogue tonight.” Liv’s voice is calm, measured, and Sonny takes a breath hearing that Amanda is in one piece.

“What happened?”

“She went after Bobby and Noel. Honey trap.” Liv says, and Sonny’s brain takes a second to catch up. The reality of what Liv is implying, what Amanda did  _ without backup,  _ sends him staggering a step backward. 

“They didn’t…” he can’t vocalize the thought, finds himself begging silently that it didn’t happen, not to Amanda, not again. Hearing about her rape, having her share that with him, still weighs heavily on Sonny. Sure, he’s glad he knows, but every time he thinks about it all he feels is helplessness, that someone could do something like that to the woman he loves so much and he wasn’t there to stop it.

Liv draws him back into the present. “No, they tried, but she fought them off. She didn’t know they’d already lawyered up.”

Sonny picks up his jacket. “Tell her I’ve got Jesse, that I’ll be at her place if she makes it home tonight. I assume you’ll be staying late to talk to her?” 

At Liv’s nod, Sonny tries to calm himself down. “I need to not be here when she gets back.”

“I get it,” Olivia tells him, “go.”

Jesse’s fussy the whole night, and Sonny can’t help but relate to the baby. “I get it kiddo. I’m a little frustrated too.” 

He makes spaghetti - something easy. Jesse can’t eat it anyways and he’s not really hungry, but he makes himself have a small bowl. Not eating isn’t really an option in his line of work. If you get the chance to eat, you take it, because who the hell knows when it’ll come again. 

Sonny hears the door click sometime after 1am; he’s just gotten Jesse down after her second bottle and he’s too wired to sleep. He stays on the couch, planning his talking points in his head. He doesn’t know how to do this. 

He and Amanda aren’t even official; they’re in that weird in between where he  _ knows  _ what this is and he hopes they’ll get there. He cooks her dinner more often than he doesn’t and sleeps on the couch three times a week because he’s “helping out with Jesse” but they both know, he’s nearly positive, what this is. But the limbo they’re in makes it difficult for Sonny to know how he  _ should  _ feel about the situation. He knows what he  _ does _ feel: fear, helplessness, anger(and if he’s totally honest with himself, a smidge of pride in Amanda’s on brand brazen rightfighting). But Sonny doesn’t know what he’s allowed to tell Amanda, what’s safe to say and what’s going to scare her off. 

Every anxiety swirling around his head, every talking point he’d scripted out just kind of vanishes when he sees her. 

She just leans against the doorway of the living room. 

He doesn’t know exactly what he expected her to look like. If Liv chewed her out, he’d expect anger. The Amanda in the doorway just looks empty. He stands to meet her, expecting a confrontation about why he left the precinct before she got there or why he sent the nanny home. Amanda looks at him, silent. 

And then she takes three steps forward and practically falls the rest of the way to him, face forward into his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist. Sonny freezes for just a moment, and then his brain reboots and he’s hugging her back, tucking her head under his chin and rubbing her back. She’s not crying, not saying anything at all, but Sonny knows she must be thinking about whatever happened. He realizes he didn’t stick around long enough to find out what happened, not in any detail. But this Amanda is not the woman he knows, not the fight he was expecting, and his gut feels it. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.” Sonny whispers.

Eventually, she pulls away, and he sees just the slightest sheen in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She says, and Sonny frowns.

“Sorry? ‘Manda, what do you have to be sorry for?” he tucks her hair behind her ear.

“I know I worried you, and I know what I did was stupid. I’m just… I’m sorry.”

“Forget that. Are you okay?” He studies her, watching the way her eyes flit away from his for just a moment as she composes herself. 

“I will be,” she tells him, honest. “I didn’t know they’d already lawyered up, or I never would’ve…” she says, shrugging, and he nods. 

“You’re a great cop, Manda. Liv knows that.” 

Amanda nods at him. As if on cue, Jesse starts crying again.

Amanda breaks away from him to go to her. She pauses in the doorway to the nursery. “There’s a video,” she tells him, “you don’t… you don’t have to watch it.”

Sonny just nods at her, not sure what to say to that. When she returns, Jesse in her arms, she’s just Amanda again, all signs of weakness erased. Watching her with her daughter warms Sonny’s heart, and for the millionth time since Jesse was born Sonny has to remind himself that she isn’t his daughter, nor is Amanda his girl.

* * *

He does, in fact, end up watching the video, because he gets called into the meeting where Liv shows it, but finds himself looking away. It’s a strong sense of nausea that slams into him when he hears just the slightest note of  _ fear  _ in Amanda’s voice, right before she hits Noel and fights her way out of there.

Sonny trusts Amanda completely, with her own safety and his life, yet hearing that fear, hearing Amanda fight two men off on her own, alone, afraid, makes him want to vomit. It makes him want to hit something, hunt Bobby down, rip his heart out, but he doesn’t.

He walks out of Liv’s office on unsteady legs, going to get a coffee. He doesn’t look at Amanda when she walks up beside him, can’t for fear that he’ll hear that fear again when he sees her face. 

Instead, Sonny hands her a cup of coffee without a word.

“Thank you,” she tells him, and the way Amanda says it Sonny could swear it’s for so much more than just the coffee.


	2. 1718

“But a rapist? He is  _ never  _ going to be trusted again. He’s in purgatory.” Sonny sighs, and Amanda watches him. He just doesn’t look like the Sonny she’s grown to l-know. She knows that this assignment has changed him, added even more shades of gray to their already murky job. She also knows that empathy for criminals can make a better cop, but right now it just seems to be tearing up Carisi.

“Are you alright?” Amanda asks, and he shrugs, still not meeting her gaze. “Hey. Why don’t you come over for dinner, and hang out with Jesse?” He looks at her, and she can see he’s still hesitant. “Yeah? I promise you the minute she starts wailing, it will clear your head of everything else.”

He cracks a smile at that, all too familiar with the set of lungs on Jesse, and studies Amanda for a moment. “Dinner, huh?”

She nods, giving him a smile. “Yeah. Come on.”

He follows dutifully, giving one last glance at the courtroom. “Did you learn to cook?”

Amanda snorts. “No, I didn’t learn to cook, you’re going to cook, we’re going to shop on the way.” She’d just suggest getting takeout, but she knows that cooking will help him destress.

He ends up making pasta carbonara, which she knows is a comfort food for him. 

They eat mostly in silence, Jesse gargling at them with a smile on her face. 

“You know, she loves you,” Amanda tells Sonny, who just shrugs, watching Jesse with a soft smile on his face.

“She’s a great kid.” 

“No, I mean it. I mean, I’m her mom, and she loves me, but she thinks you hung the moon, Sonny.” As if on cue, Jesse bangs a meaty fist on her highchair and reaches for Sonny. He smiles and unbuckles her, letting her yank at the buttons on his shirt. “I can barely get her down at night when you’re not here, you know that?” 

Sonny looks over at Amanda. “No, I didn’t know that. But, Manda, she’s your kid, she’ll never love anyone more than she loves you.”

Amanda just smiles and watches Jesse gaze at Sonny. She’s not scared of being a single mother, has never truly struggled with the idea of raising Jesse on her own, and it occurs to her as she watches Sonny with Jesse that he’s the reason why. Sure, Jesse’s dad was supportive, but he really isn’t in her life. Sonny is. He’s Jesse’s best father figure, and the closest thing Amanda has to- whatever they are. They both know, she imagines, and she’s okay with where this is. It’s complicated. They work together, and she has a kid, and she’s complicated. 

“I was worried about you.” Amanda blurts, and he looks up at her, away from Jesse.

“Yeah?” Sonny says, voice quiet, tempered.

“Yeah. I’m, uh…” Amanda looks at her dinner, and then back up at Sonny. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Sonny blinks at her. “Me too,” he says, and smiles.

They do the dishes side by side(well, Sonny does the dishes, Amanda lets Jesse drool on the dishtowel she’s supposed to be drying with and Sonny watches, amused, but doesn’t say anything).

Amanda takes secret pleasure in having taught Sonny to watch trashy reality TV, and he’s even started liking a few of them(Bachelor in Paradise is his personal favorite, and so she puts it on).

He puts Jesse down a little after 10pm, but they get sucked into an episode and then another and before she knows it she’s looking at her phone and it’s almost midnight.

“Woah, it got late.” Amanda laughs, and Sonny looks away from the TV at the clock on the wall. 

“Yeah, shit.” Sonny stretches, wincing slightly. Amanda can tell his back is still really hurting. “Can I stay on the couch?”

“No,” Amanda says, blurting again without thinking. Sonny looks up, confused. He stays on the couch several times a week, and Amanda’s never turned him down. “You can’t sleep on the couch with your back hurting like that. You’re sleeping in my room tonight.” 

Sonny shakes his head, standing. “Nah, Manda, I’m not putting you out on the couch.”

“You’re not,” Amanda smiles, “I’m not taking the couch either. Come on, I still have the tshirt and sweats you left here last time, they’re clean.”

Sonny flushes, just slightly, and Amanda thinks it’s the cutest thing in the world. “Oh,” he mumbles.

* * *

  
Amanda wakes to Jesse crying, groaning as she tries to work up the desire to get out of her warm bed. 

“I got her,” the voice from behind her reminds Amanda of the other person in her bed. She mumbles a sleepy thanks, trying to ignore the warm feeling she knows is more than just her duvet.

She rolls over when she hears him come back in. He’s carrying Jesse, and she watches him as he climbs back into bed. Jesse’s teary eyed but calm, and Sonny sits back against the headboard with her on his chest. 

“Little one just didn’t want to be alone.” He explains. 

Amanda smiles. “I can understand that.”

Amanda gives into her impulses, again. She reaches out and grabs his hand. Sonny stares at her, and she just closes her eyes, already starting to drift back off. When she wakes up in the morning, Sonny is asleep exactly where he was, Jesse still on his chest, and they’re still holding hands. 

Yeah, Amanda could get used to this. 


End file.
